Some odd things went down the night Dani died.
As she restored the old countryside house that she and her husband, Tim, had recently purchased, Dani misplaced her phone. She went out to her car to search for it, leaving the front door ajar. Still unable to find it, she went back inside and locked the door.
Then a man came. He told her he’d been watching the house and that while her back was turned, someone snuck through that open door.
Dani realizes the man is a former patient of her husband, Tim, who works at a local psychiatric hospital. She’s frightened. On the one hand, the man, Olin Boole, seems genuinely concerned for her safety, offering to head back into town to call the police since neither of them has a phone.
On the other hand, Dani knows that Olin was only recently discharged. He had wound up in her husband’s care after beating his mother to death. And the thought of being trapped with him in a house with no power, no phone, no neighbors to call to help is terrifying.
What happened next, nobody can be sure. But Tim found Dani dead the next morning after finishing his shift at the hospital. And Olin was arrested for Dani’s murder.
A year later, Darcy (Dani’s twin sister) still hasn’t quite recovered from her sister’s death. She knows that Dani would never have opened the door for a man she didn’t know. She also finds it unsettling that Tim has moved on so quickly, moving in with his new girlfriend to the very house that Dani died in.
But then Tim brings Darcy the glass eye belonging to the recently deceased Olin. Unbeknownst to Dani’s murderer, Darcy is psychic, able to divine an object’s (and its owner’s) entire history just by touching it.
And what Darcy sees through Olin’s eye is much, much odder than anything she could have expected.
Darcy and Dani were close, caring for each other even when it wasn’t necessarily wanted.
Darcy went blind after suffering from brain cancer. It was after she lost her sight that her psychic abilities manifested themselves. And when she touches objects, she’s indeed able to see much of the prior owner’s life story.
Darcy works in an antique shop previously owned by her mother. She verbally threatens would-be shoplifters that all of the objects are cursed. It’s untrue, but Dani indeed does keep a collection of haunted oddities in the back of her store, out of the public eye.
Among those items are a toy rabbit that begins to play cymbals on its own. There’s also a hotel reception bell that summons the violent ghost of a bellboy. (We’re told the ghost has killed two people already.)
Elsewhere, Darcy delivers a wooden, effigy-like mannequin to Tim’s house on the anniversary of Dani’s death. It’s human-like in appearance, but its face is set in a twisted, pained scream, giving it an occult feel. In the skull, Yana (Tim’s girlfriend) finds two photos of the twins, a bit of Darcy’s hair, a human tooth and a vial of blood, reinforcing the mannequin’s occultic vibe.
The effigy seemingly moves on its own. But whenever Yana or Tim take a second look, it returns to its prior position, leading them to believe they’re just imagining things. Similarly, Yana believes she’s seeing Dani around the house, but upon second glance, the spirit is gone.
Tim and Yana each claim they don’t believe in ghosts or psychics. But Darcy says she does, and that Dani harbored those beliefs, too. Darcy also notes that it was a witch who gave their mother the wooden mannequin.
Meanwhile, Olin has some crosses in his room at the hospital, and he kneels to pray. A man says he keeps breaking a cross that was set to mark the location of his old school because he didn’t like it there. We hear about a nun at that school who claimed she went blind after God showed her what hell looks like. A man requests a priest, hoping to confess to his crimes because he fears going to hell.
Darcy sets a camera on a time lapse, hoping to capture the image of a ghost in her house. (Later, pictures seemingly show Dani’s spirit.)
[Spoiler Warning] It turns out that Dani’s ghost is haunting the house. Her spirit is able to move items, and she appears as a decaying corpse. The wooden effigy is also moving about, controlled by Darcy, who employs witchcraft to do so.
We learn that a man had an extramarital affair. Darcy says she discovered that a guy had cheated on his wife multiple times by touching his wedding ring. An unwed couple lives together.
Jump scares and suspenseful scenes set the tone for this inherently violent film. And while we don’t directly witness many of the brutal actions that occur, there’s plenty of buildup before multiple murders. And we usually catch a glimpse of the mangled corpses after.
A masked man stalks Dani inside her house. It appears that he likes the suspense, popping out of shadows and terrifying her. He picks up a hammer (with which Dani had armored herself earlier, but she foolishly sets it down), and the camera cuts away. We see Dani’s blood-stained tent next, her killer casually sitting next to it, still masked.
A woman falls through a trapdoor that was purposely left open. Her limbs are mangled, and her head bleeds heavily as she struggles for breath.
A psychiatric patient is terrified after witnessing a fellow patient’s murder (which occurs offscreen). He examines the corpse, its head smashed into pieces with bits of brain matter strewn about.
Two men plot the murder of a woman. The man who will carry out the deed asks permission to make the death sexual in nature, implying rape. But the second man refuses, since he cares for the victim; he doesn’t want her hurt, just dead.
We hear a story about a man who was pushed down the stairs and killed by a drunk. We learn Olin beat his mother to death because she was abusive, blinding him in one eye. A man breaks his leg, exposing the bone, after jumping from a landing to the floor below.
A corrupt psychiatrist claims that a man is insane, strapping him down. The psychiatrist then releases a cannibal patient on him. The cannibal bites the other man’s foot, and it’s implied he does more.
A man gets lifted off the ground by his head. He’s knocked unconscious and badly injured, but he’s still alive. The ghost of a murderous bellboy appears; his intent to kill a man is clear.
Two uses of the f-word.
People drink wine. We hear a story about a violent drunk man.
Someone selfishly tries to protect his reputation and financial assets by lying to his wife instead of telling her that he’d had an affair and wanted a divorce. He claims he didn’t want to hurt her, but he winds up hurting many people, including her, in the process.
Darcy is vengeful when she learns the truth of her sister’s death. She’s inconsolable. It leads to her doom, but not before she unleashes her revenge.
An orderly is cruel to a psych patient, repeatedly threatening and intimidating him. We see pictures of psych patients in straightjackets and padded rooms. One patient wears a face mask that forces his jaw shut.
People lie. Tim and Yana are a bit rude to Darcy. Darcy fears getting committed to the psychiatric hospital by Tim. (And we learn some people working there are corrupt, imprisoning patients unjustly.)
Oddity is rooted in the occult and chock-full of violent deaths. And it’s all because a man decided to have an affair.
That content alone should be enough to turn most families away, but let me expound a bit further: Several people are killed (albeit offscreen), resulting in pools of blood, broken limbs and otherwise mangled corpses.
Jump scares, suspense and creepy masks and mannequins permeate the film, courtesy of ghosts and witchcraft. An extramarital affair—and the offender’s fear of losing everything if found out—drives the motive of each murder that occurs in this film. And there are two f-bombs to boot.
Really, the only odd thing about Oddity would be taking your kids to see it.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
